


Free Time

by Milkbonez



Category: New Dangan Ronpa V3: Everyone's New Semester of Killing
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, During Canon, Gen, It may or may not take place during my Kaede AU, No Spoilers, and it really doesn't matter, they play tag
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-08
Updated: 2019-07-08
Packaged: 2020-06-24 13:20:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,489
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19724491
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Milkbonez/pseuds/Milkbonez
Summary: When Kaede reaches out to Kokichi during her downtime, he utters a shriek and runs away from her instead. She then spends some time running after Kokichi, who seems to enjoy being chased. (One-shot.)





	Free Time

**Author's Note:**

> Behold, the very first anything I've ever written for Danganronpa! I already really liked the potential dynamic for Kaede and Kokichi based on their interactions early in the game, so I wrote them having some friendly play time back in May 2018. I was trying to make it detailed, so there's a lot of scenery description, but in the end, it's just that pre-Free Time Event blurb that Kaede has for her second event with Kokichi.

Kaede peered within the door of the first-floor classroom. The entire room had been claimed by ivy in some form. It drooped from the ceiling rafters, some vines low enough to touch the tops of the sixteen desks. It flanked the LCD blackboard at the front of the room. Vines growing outside the windows suppressed the noon daylight; only minute flecks came through. Even without the ivy, the windows were blocked by criss-crossings of thick barbed wire. She had seen it over every window of the academy, but the sight never failed to lay a weighty sense of dread on her shoulders. The air in here was stagnant, smothering.

Kokichi crouched at one side of the blackboard at the front of the room, running his hands along the side of the darkened screen. Three cold, white lights on the ceiling illuminated his white suit and purple-tipped dark hair. When Kaede stepped into the room, he turned his head, face lighting up. “Fancy seeing you here, stranger,” he greeted, rising.

“Hi, Kokichi. What are you doing?”

“I was trying to figure out how to turn this thing on.” He nodded at the blackboard. “Shuichi isn’t with you today?”

She shook her head. “We’ve been investigating a lot, and I wanted to take a break from that. So I came looking for you.”

“Oh, I see. Haven’t had enough of me yet, even after yesterday?”

The evening prior, she had seen Kokichi in the dormitory, deep in thought, his face creased with worry. No wonder, seeing as they and their fourteen peers had been thrust into a killing game with no recollection of how they got there. Kaede had wanted to try to cheer him up some, inspire hope in him. His brazen fibs and situationally inappropriate remarks, however, had gotten under her skin and sent her fuming back to her room.

Today might be better, she had thought. She had snagged a chilled thermos of boba tea (with a complimentary wide straw) from the school store, thinking he would enjoy it. The tea was creamy and the boba was fun to chew. With her gift tucked away in her backpack, she was hoping she could put him in a good mood and get him to open up in honesty.

Kokichi went on, “Well, you know, it’s dangerous to be wandering around alone. Watch out, Kiibo is standing right behind you with a knife!”

Her shoulders tensed, but her expression hardened. “Hey, don’t even joke around like that.” Despite herself, Kaede ventured a look over her shoulder.

“Ha! That was totally a lie, but I still got you!”

She grunted. “That wasn’t funny!”

“Oh, can it be?! Were you thinking about killing me this whole time?” Kaede took a breath to scold him, but he yelled, “Aaahh! Someone, help meeee! She’s gonna murder meeee!” He ducked low as he darted past her out the classroom door.

“Kokichi, wait!” With a groan, she plopped her backpack on a desk and followed him.

He was _fast_ ; he was already darting into the little hallway forming the square outer rim of the entry foyer. The knee-high grasses and wildflowers that grew from the cracked floor tiles bowed under Kaede’s feet as she cut across the entrance foyer to the other end of the outer rim. Kokichi’s footsteps retreated in the direction from which he’d come. She pressed forward; if she tried to head him off, she knew he would turn and lead her in circles around the outer rim hallway.

Through the iron bars in the wall around the entry foyer, she saw the white of Kokichi’s outfit pass through a ray of sunshine coming in through a clear window somewhere up high. He was making a beeline for the stairs to the second floor in the school’s west wing. “Here we go…” she muttered, a tad frustrated already.

A door slamming rang in the silence of the academy just as Kaede began her ascent. The weird long dragon statue glowered at her approach, ever silent. Further on, golden rays of sunlight shone through several barred windows. Unsurprisingly, the second floor had even more greenery, like the first. Patches of tall grass, lavenders, and daffodils grew interspersed with short grass and broken floor tiles. Somehow, even a few little, leafy trees thrived up here. A glance up at the ceiling would show exposed vent pipes along the wall, an industrial contrast to the nature growing up from below.

If one considered, the place had a certain beauty to it… but it was a flimsy cover overlaying the anxiety and fear that breathed down one’s shoulders.

Aside from the Ultimate Pianist’s Lab, there were two classrooms up here. Kaede hurried to the nearer one, Classroom B, and threw open the door. It was nearly identical to Classroom A downstairs, from the hanging ivy to the wired-off windows. The only real difference was that the LCD blackboard was powered on, its electric green glow muffled by the ceiling lights.

Kokichi was absent.

Or was he? Two student lockers stood in the far corner, the very lockers out of which Kaede and Shuichi tumbled just days ago. Kokichi was small. He could easily squeeze into one of them. Scurrying over, she grabbed both locker handles and yanked. “Gotcha!”

Empty.

“Huh?!” Her smile fell and brows creased in confusion. When she and Shuichi had checked last, Classroom C had been locked, so Kokichi couldn’t have gotten in there. “…Could he?”

“Nee-heehee!” came the laughter from just outside.

Kaede found Kokichi standing with his arms crossed in the hallway, beaming, a bunch of wildflowers in one fist. Behind him, the door to the Ultimate Pianist’s Lab was open a crack.

“You…!”

“Maaan, I sure was lucky your lab door was unlocked.”

Her face twisted into a scowl. “What were you doing in my lab?!”

“Pretending to be the Ultimate Pianist and tickling the ivories, of course!”

“… You’re lying.”

“Duuuh! If I was doing that, you would have heard me. Come have a look, if you don’t believe me.”

He moved aside when she made her way over. Shooting him a momentary glare, she poked her head in. The grand piano in the center of the room appeared untouched. None of the countless CDs in the shelves beside the door looked out of place. Binders of music sheets lay neatly on the podium at the front of the room.

Kokichi sang, “I just hid in there to trick you while you were poking around in the classroom, that’s all.” He held out his bundle of flowers. “As an apology, I’ll give you these.”

Closing the door, Kaede reached for the proffered plants only for Kokichi to frisk away. He waved them at her. “If you can catch me.”

Of course he wasn’t about to make this easy, she thought with an internal sigh. Nevertheless, she wasn’t deterred. Kokichi took several running steps backwards or hop sideways each time her arm came near enough to grab him. He never took his eyes off her for the few minutes that they danced, always anticipating her movements.

At last he said, “You know what? I’m getting bored here. You can have them anyway!” He chucked the flowers at her face.

Kaede flinched, feeling them bounce off of her softly. When she opened her eyes, she glimpsed him speeding back towards the stairs, and the chase was on again. As she ran, she wondered how long she was going to keep this up. She was tiring quickly, and he was just so crafty and quick on his feet.

But, he started this game, and she could finish it. No, she _would_ finish it. He would get tired or trip on a rock, or something. Either way, she would catch him, give him that gift, and win him over.

Kokichi was a white blur in the corner of her eye when she reached the bottom of the staircase. She pursued him around a corner, past the school store, and into the dining hall. Miu was on her way out, and it took all of Kaede’s control to avoid ramming straight into her. Miu’s blue eyes flared with disdain when Kaede brushed past her, and she snarled, “Watch it, you slut!”

“Sorry!” Kaede shouted over her shoulder, crashing outside to the deck. The patio deck was simple area with about five little tables and a dozen plastic chairs. A long dirt pathway led from the deck to the cobblestones of the courtyard.

The pure sunlight dazzled her after being indoors. She stopped in the middle of the deck to shield her eyes, wheezing hard. Her heart drumming in her ears drowned out the distant metallic whirring of the Exisals doing maintenance. Her lungs burned; her legs were heavy from exertion. Two beads of sweat ran down her neck. She slumped into a chair and allowed her head to droop forward, her blonde hair curtaining the sun out of her face.

When her breathing and pulse returned to normal, she lifted her head again and saw him on the dirt path. He stood bent over with his hands on his knees, chest heaving. He was getting worn out, she thought with a smirk. Good. That much closer to catching him.

Even so, he was watching her, too. When she rose from the chair, he straightened up. He moved when she moved, taking several long strides as she stepped down from the deck onto the dirt. Kaede paused. So did he. She took one, two, three exaggerated steps forward. He ran a few yards then skidded to a stop. Another pause. She lurched forward to catch him off guard but halted yet again without warning. The pout on Kokichi’s face was priceless. She laughed.

“Come ooon, Kaede,” he whined. “Come catch me~!” He wagged his bum at her.

Kaede grinned. “If you insist. Here I come!”

Or not. As she hurried after the kvelling Kokichi, her rib cramped. She stumbled over the cobblestones at the front of the school, clutching her side, watching him slip inside the wooden double doors. To her luck, the cramp subsided soon enough.

The doors closing at her back reverberated in the hush. The indoors felt so much darker now, even though the sun still beamed from the windows up high. Kokichi’s footsteps betrayed his location in the east wing. She hoped that he were returning to Classroom A, but as she followed the sound, Kaede spied him sprinting beyond it to the basement stairs. He was probably going to lead her round and round the library.

To her surprise, his giggles didn’t come from where the library doors were, but from the game room, to the left of the staircase. She huffed a knowing chuckle. In this room, arcade games of all sorts, from classic platformers to dance-based rhythm games, stood on either side of the room. None of their screens flashed; it was all quiet here. Gaunt tree roots reached across the floor, entangled around cables, choked the machines themselves.

On the other end of the room, the breathless Kokichi tried to nudge open sliding door into the next room. Locked.

Kaede leaned against the doorframe, catching her breath. He hissed, “Shit…”

“You didn’t see that coming, did you, Kokichi?” she taunted. He nudged the door again as if it had unlocked itself in the ten seconds since he first tried. “Looks like you have nowhere to run. I’ve got you now!” Her pride in having finally cornered him brought new life into her tired legs. She began her advance.

“Is that so…?” Kokichi swung around to face her, grinning with his teeth. The corners of his smile seemed to stretch unnaturally past his eyes. The soft orange lighting of the room exaggerated the lines on his cheeks and around his eyes. His bangs cast a sinister shadow across his face. The look petrified Kaede in mid-step, sending a cold shiver up the nape of her neck.

Time dragged to a crawl, then a standstill. Moments passed like hours, and still neither of them moved except for their heavy breathing. They stood with gazes held fast to each other, his huge, treacherous, unwavering countenance making her eyes grow in alarm. Then, Kokichi charged.

“ _Rahhh!_ ”

With a strangled shriek, Kaede fled, flying up the basement stairs. His tramping steps echoed close behind, overshadowed by his cackling. Back on the ground floor, a thought struck her: he was running right toward her! She could catch him now!

She slowed down, letting him close the gap between them, then whirled around and lunged. His grin dropped to an “Oh, crap!” frown right before they collided. They toppled onto the grass and the cracked, uneven floor. The seeds of some unfortunate dandelions danced in the air around them. They were a stone’s throw from Classroom A.

“Ughhh…” Kaede had landed hard on her hip; a dull pain hummed in her bones that rivaled the fire in her throat. Still, she managed to keep her grip on the back of Kokichi’s white suit with both hands. She could feel his heart thumping against her stomach at a mile a minute. “Ha… I caught you, Kokichi…”

Panting against her neck, Kokichi lifted his chin to meet her face. His terrifying grin had been replaced by a lighthearted look, purple eyes twinkling. One of his arms was sprawled over her side, the other bent underneath him as if he’d braced himself with his elbow. “You’ve won this round,” he said. “Did you have a nice trip~?”

Kaede’s smirk disappeared. “Don’t.” She released his shirt, and they separated, steadily climbing to their feet. Combing through her thick hair, she found and pulled out a few stray dandelion seeds. “And I can’t go for another round. I’m way too tired. Besides, I have something I want to give you.”

He rubbed his elbow, perking up. Half a dozen dandelion seeds clung to his hair. “Oh, yeah? Why didn’t you say so earlier?”

“I was going to, but then you ran off screaming.”

“Nee-heehee! That’s what you’re _supposed_ to do when you play tag! But you already know that, because you’re really good at playing tag.”

Her eyebrows went up. “You think so?”

Kokichi shrugged. “Who knows. I am a liar, if you recall.”

Kaede heaved a dramatic sigh, betrayed by the return of her smirk. All his laughter during their game was proof enough of his true feelings. “By the way, you have some dandelion seeds in your hair…”

“Do I?” He clasped his hands behind his head, looking pleased. “Heh, maybe if I leave them there long enough, they’ll grow into a flower crown on their own.”

She snickered at the absurdity of the notion, then beckoned him towards the first-floor classroom. In a way, they had grown a little closer today. “If you say so. Now come on. The present I have for you is in my backpack.”


End file.
